At the Ballet
by ILoVeWicked
Summary: Despite their unfortunate family issues, Vivienne, Elle, and Brooke learn that "everything is beautiful at the ballet". Song-fic/One-shot to A Chorus Line's "At the Ballet".


**At the Ballet**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Legally Blonde the Musical or A Chorus Line or "At the Ballet".**

**Hey, everyone! So I'm taking a wee little vacation from Every Tragedy Needs a Greek Chorus to come up with some ideas for it because it was frustrating me. I also am taking the break as an opportunity to write the sequel to Don't Put All of Your Eggs in One Basket, which I decided to make a multi-chaptered fic instead of a one-shot. I thought it would only be fair to see how far most of the characters came along, so I hope you guys are happy with that. **

**As far as this fic goes, I was cleaning up the Christmas decorations with my mom and listening to my iPod when I heard this song. I just saw A Chorus Line in mid-December (It was SO amazing…I highly recommend it if you haven't seen it already!) and I thought this song would make an interesting fic. I just had to make a few alterations to the song to make it fit…like cutting some of the confusing parts where all three cast members are singing special parts and I had to change the name Maggie to Brooke…to make the story fit with the song. I hope you enjoy! **

**-ILoVeWicked**

_Daddy always thought that he married beneath him.  
That's what he said, that's what he said.  
When he proposed he informed my mother  
He was probably her very last chance.  
__And though she was twenty-two,  
Though she was twenty-two,  
Though she was twenty-two,  
She married him._

My father, Albert Kensington, had never been a pleasure to have as a father. I had discovered that when I was at the fragile age of two years old and my mother, Kathleen Kensington told me the story of how she had met my father.

Mom was a twenty-two year old pageant queen. When she was about three years old, my grandmother, a single mother who was living on a store employee's salary, began entering her in baby beauty pageants to earn some spare money. Neither of them had any idea that the public would react to her so vividly. My mother became a competition star even before she could spell 'Beauty Pageant'. I had seen old pictures of her in her glory days, and she really was beautiful. She was always the homecoming queen and prom queen in school, and she later moved on to become Miss Rhode Island. She would have made it to Miss America if my father hadn't come along to stop it.

My other grandparents didn't need to showcase their child to earn money. They were filthy rich politicians who had their noses stuck in the air, and they had unfortunately spawned my father. He was running one of the pageants my mom was entering. They dated secretly for a while, my realistic Romeo and Juliet, until my father finally mustered up the guts to propose to my mother. She had obviously fallen under the spell of Dad's money and power and was head over heels in love with that, and not the man himself. She was too starry-eyed to notice that he pointed out her every flaw and kept telling her that she was a wash-out, a has-been, yesterday's news.

Yet she married him.

_Life with my dad wasn't ever a picnic  
More like a "Come as you are."  
When I was five I remember my mother  
Dug earrings out of the car  
I knew they weren't hers, But it wasn't  
Something you'd want to discuss.  
He wasn't warm.  
Well, not to her.  
Well, not to us._

Along with my mother, I was treated like a piece of garbage. Sure, he still acknowledged me as his daughter, but he never proudly flaunted me off like his other yuppy friends did with their daughters. That's when I took the hint that I wasn't a Trophy Daughter. I was just That Kid.

I had never seen my parents kiss or hug, or even touch each other for that matter. When over my best friend Andrea's house, her parents would kiss in front of she and I all the time. Andrea would crinkle her nose and shout out in protest, but I found the whole thing…love, I mean…to be fascinating, since I could never experience it first hand.

And one day when I was five, before my Mom drove me to Andrea's house, she found a pair of earrings in the back seat of our car. Now, Mother wore a different pair of earrings every day, and I knew for a fact that those hideous, cheap things didn't belong to her. If not Mom, and not me, than someone else. At five years old, I already had discovered what an affair was, and it was horrible. I had lost my adolescence in a matter of minutes.

My daddy was in love with someone else, and I couldn't understand. He could be so kind and sweet to another woman, but to his own wife and daughter, he was so cold.

_But  
Everything was beautiful at the ballet.  
Graceful men lift lovely girls in white.  
Yes, everything was beautiful at ballet.  
Hey!  
I was happy... at the ballet._

Andrea took ballet classes, and for her birthday she took a bunch of her friends to see _The Nutcracker Ballet_. I didn't know much about the ballet. All that came to mind were tutus and men jumping around in leotards.

But the ballet was much different than I had expected. While most girls complained about how bored they were, I watched intently. Every step, every lift, every move, it was all so graceful and so beautiful. I had no idea a play without words could say so much. I imagined my parents, happy and dancing, and for once, it made me happy.

_That's why I started class...  
Up a steep and very narrow stairway.  
__To the voice like a metronome.  
__Up a steep and very narrow stairway.  
__It wasn't paradise…  
__It wasn't paradise…  
__It wasn't paradise…  
__But it was home._

Just a mere week after seeing _The Nutcracker_, I enrolled in ballet classes. Sure, there was nothing there but a wooden floor, mirrors around the wall, a bar, and a bunch of other stuck up prima ballerinas, but it made me feel more welcome than my own house ever did. If only my father could see me there. Maybe, if he saw me dancing, if he saw the ballet, he would come to his senses.

_Mother always said I'd be very attractive  
When I grew up, when I grew up.  
"Diff'rent," she said, "With a special something  
And a very, very personal flair."  
And though I was eight or nine,  
Though I was eight or nine,  
Though I was eight or nine,  
I hated her._

Yes, to everyone _now _I was a beautiful blonde, but it took a lot to get that way. When I was a child I didn't look half as gorgeous as I did now. Heck, if I had stayed the stocky, short, four-eyed dork I was when I was younger, the people at Harvard probably would have just left me alone.

I never felt beautiful. I would come home from school crying because I didn't feel pretty enough and kids on the playground would tease me, and all my mother would say was, "Give it some time, Elle. When you grow up, I'm sure you'll be very attractive. You'll be different, with a personal flare and a very special something about you."

It was somewhat comforting to know she had faith in me for the future. But she always talked down to me until I grew out of my awkward state during the summer of eighth grade, when I had finally decided to _make _myself pretty. Back when I was a sensitive eight or nine year old though, I resented my own mother for the way she treated me. Imagine how horrible it must be to have your own mother not think you were beautiful. No insult from the kids on the playground could compare to the insults Mom kept inside.

_Now, "Diff'rent" is nice, but it sure isn't pretty.  
"Pretty" is what it's about.  
I never met anyone who was "diff'rent"  
Who couldn't figure that out.  
So beautiful I'd never lived to see.  
But it was clear,  
If not to her,  
Well, then... to me...  
_

I didn't want to be different. I wanted to be pretty, because being pretty meant the world to me. I wanted to be like the popular girls I saw on TV. I had the hair for it; I just needed to fix everything else. And I don't think my mother quite understood that I already knew that she thought I was ugly, a disgrace to the beautiful Woods girls that came before me.

I hope she felt happy with herself for making her daughter feel self-conscious and insecure about herself even before she hit puberty.

But in that time, before I became the Elle Woods everyone was familiar with, I found solace in only one thing.

_That everyone is beautiful at the ballet.  
Every prince has got to have his swan.  
Yes, everyone is beautiful at the ballet.  
__Hey!  
__I was pretty…  
__At the ballet._

My mother had a bad habit on spending her money on ridiculous things, according to my father. There was no stopping Mom when she had a credit card or a wallet in her hands. She would buy us boats, despite the fact that we lived hours away from the coast, and she bought other ridiculous items like gawky, expensive rings and ponies.

But the one thing I didn't fuss over when mother bought them was ballet tickets. I'd get all dressed up in my frilly pink dresses and curl my hair and actually feel pretty for a moment as I watched the beautiful ballerinas. I prayed that someday I would have that flawless skin, the perfectly aligned posture, the stone-like, angelic faces, and the beautiful long legs that the dancers had.

At the ballet, I didn't feel different. I felt pretty, beautiful even.

_Up a steep and very narrow stairway.  
__To the voice like a metronome.  
__Up a steep and very narrow stairway.  
__It wasn't paradise…  
__It wasn't paradise…  
__It wasn't paradise…  
__But it was home._

And when I saw my reflection in the mirror years later on my graduation day from Harvard, I saw the same awkward eight-year-old girl that everyone had ridiculed, including own mother. And for some odd reason, I smiled.

I wasn't sure if it was the fact that being loved by Emmett and proposing to him that day was making me feel beautiful, the fact that I had defied my mother's beliefs, or the fact that I had ballet tickets for next week, but I sure felt pretty.

_I don't know what they were for or against, really,  
Except each other.  
I mean I was born to save their marriage  
But when my father came to pick my mother up at the hospital  
He said, "Well, I thought this was going to help. But I guess it's not..."  
Anyway, I did have a fantastic fantasy life.  
I used to dance around the living room with my arms up like this  
My fantasy was that it was an Indian Chief...  
And he'd say to me,  
"Brooke, do you wanna dance?"  
And I'd say, "Daddy, I would love to dance!"_

I've heard of kids who were born to save their terminally ill siblings, but I had never heard of a child born to save a terminally ill marriage. That was, of course, until I was born. I was supposed to be the ray of light that cleared up the stormy marriage of Maggie and Bill Wyndham, but apparently I wasn't good enough for him.

When he came to pick my mother up from the hospital, all he said to her was, "Well, I thought this was going to help. But I guess it's not." At a clueless three days old, I had no idea that a major chunk of my life had literally walked away. I would never get to be Daddy's Little Girl. I would never be able to give someone a Father's Day gift. I would never even get to have my father walk me down the aisle on my wedding day.

Sometimes I heard Mom crying at night. I could tell she missed my father, and I couldn't help but feel responsible. Even though their marriage would have fallen apart without me anyway, I still believed that I was that final tug, the final straw that really tore them apart.

Whenever I was alone or I was sure my mother wasn't looking, I used to dance around our living room, my arms held up toward the sky as I pretended he was there. I had no idea what he looked like, since my mother never allowed me to see pictures of him, so I was free to imagine him all I wanted to. My fantasy was that it was an Indian Chief whose broad shoulders my little arms were wrapped around.

And he'd say, "Brooke, do you want to dance?" I'd grin like a moron to myself and cry out, "Daddy, I would love to!"

_Everything was beautiful at the ballet,  
Raise your arms and someone's always there.  
Yes, everything was beautiful at the ballet,  
At the ballet,  
At the ballet!!!_

On a whim once, some lady gave my mother two tickets to see the local ballet production. At first I was reluctant to go. The only dancing I liked was my own fantasy dancing. But when I sat in the darkened theater, I was quickly mesmerized by the couples as they danced around. _Couples_. They were not just on stage, couples of every age sat around my mom and I, and I realized that at the ballet, I was not alone. At the ballet, no one was alone.

For the first time, I felt like I had a purpose for living besides only being born to mend a broken relationship. And it was all thanks to the ballet.

Dancing had remained a large part of my life after that fateful day. I incorporated little ballet moves into my workout videos constantly, and I never stopped dancing around my living room with my Indian Chief.

_Yes everything was beautiful at the ballet.  
__Hey!_

_I was pretty…_

"Hey, Elle, I was going to get some Chinese take-out. What do you want?" Emmett called as I stepped from our bedroom. I had a cold, and it was clear to see due to my crusty eyes, my runny, red nose, my pale face, and my mangled bed head. Emmett laid eyes on me for just one second before he broke out into a smile. I cocked my head and sniffled deeply.

"What so funny about me?" I asked in a congested voice. "Is it because I look like I stepped out of one of your comic books…?"

Emmett shook his head. "No, you look beautiful, Elle," he said through his dopey grin before he kissed me.

Who needed Mom's approval? All I needed to make me feel pretty was the man in the Batman t-shirt and the hum of classical music as I imagined the graceful, beautiful dancers at the ballet.

_I was happy..._

"Hello?" I asked into the phone. Someone with a private number on my caller ID had called. It had been a long and stressful week because of an extremely long case I had been working on. I eventually won, but it had taken the energy out of me. I was going to relieve myself by going out to the theater to see _The Nutcracker_, a holiday tradition of mine.

"Vivienne," a deep, familiar voice addressed me. I almost dropped the phone. Why on earth would my father be calling me? I moved out five years ago, and he hadn't contacted me at all since.

"Dad?" I asked, just above a whisper. I could have sworn I heard him smile, if that was even possible.

"Yes. I just saw you win your trial on the television today. I'm very proud of you, Vivienne," he told me. Was I dreaming, or was he actually congratulating me? I breathed out a smile.

"Thanks, Dad. It means a lot to me that you would call," I said softly. I was sure that if my voice went any higher, I might have just cried. There was a long moment of silence before my father made up an excuse to end the conversation and quickly hung up.

For the first time, I went to the ballet happy.

"_I would love to…"_

"Brooke?"

I looked up from my spot on the couch where I had been reading to see my boyfriend, Warner, peering down at me. He had a weird glint in his eye that made me instantly detect that he had some kind of plan in mind, even though I had specifically told him not to do anything special for my birthday.

"I…um…I know you like that ballet stuff…so I got us tickets for a show tonight. And I thought we could go dancing afterward or something. I know, you didn't want me to do anything for your birthday and it's kind of corny of me and all…but you're my girlfriend and I…"

I got up on my knees, placed my hands on the sides of his face, and kissed him for a long while. I grinned after we separated and looked into his hopeful eyes. Warner _hated _the ballet. The fact that he took into consideration that I loved it only made me fall harder for him.

"I would love to," I whispered before wrapping him into a hug. I wasn't sure if Warner was aware of it, but I was about to have my first _real _dance with a man I loved.

_At…the…ballet._

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**-ILoVeWicked**


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